German Silver
a white alloy for tableware, consisting of nickel, copper and zinc in various proportions. The best quality consists of four parts copper, two parts nickel, and two parts zinc, but this quality is the most difficult to work.
For articles which are to be cast instead of stamped or hammered about 2 per cent. of lead is added. To make a good malleable alloy, the three metals of which it is composed should all be of the best quality. German silver has a tendency to crack in ANNEALING (q. v.), and is all the more liable to do this if its component metals are impure. Its crystalline structure is got rid of by hammering, rolling, and annealing. It is harder and tougher than brass, and takes a fine polish. In color it is sufficiently near silver to make it valuable for plating with that metal.
Spoons and forks of this alloy are made in immense numbers. Such articles as salvers, dish-covers, jugs, teapots and the like are also largely made of it, but these objects, or at least some of them, are still more largely made of BRITANNIA METAL (q. v.), a greatly inferior alloy, because much softer.
Through care in preparing a suitable alloy, large objects, such as the bodies of jugs and coffeepots, can be formed of sheet German silver by "spinning" it on the lathe, instead of by stamping or by the slow process of hammering. Formerly it was only a soft alloy like Britannia metal that could be so treated. For some time past there has been a tendency to substitute for electroplatei. e., German silver plated with real silver-white alloys having nickel for their basis.